“Yeah, they never tell you you’re doing a good job.”
This was the (paraphrased, probably) comment my buddy and fellow kinda-yogi had to say about yoga instructors. He lives across the country – so it’s nice to know this stingy-with-the-compliments theme is something universal when it comes to the nation’s Zen quest. I’d have felt kinda alone and insecure otherwise. Which I do anyway in these classes a lot of the time. I’ll start out alright. But then there’s this constant push-pull of staying focused on what I’m doing. Versus processing how proud or judgey I am about my pose. Versus what the teacher’s saying to do next. Versus…. am I breathing properly? Versus… is my computer posture of wearing-my-shoulders-like-earrings taking over again? Versus… holy shit… she’s coming this way! She’s going to TOUCH ME.
What she says with her hands when she gets to me:
What I hear when her grim reaper carpals make contact with my body:
It’s inevitable.
Every class I ever go to, there comes that one asana (pose) that’s particularly difficult. We’re all perched – like neatly folded dog shit – trying our hardest not to fall out of alignment or just fall, period. And regardless of how well you’re doing, she (or he) will go down the line – tapping and tweaking some part of every body on a mat to let you all know your perfection Odyssey is absolutely futile. Still, you try to prevent it. You stand your ground like the last residents watching a tsunami approach. And this becomes your downfall. Because the first rule of yoga club is that you don’t breathe badly. And when we’re anxious, we breathe badly. And when she comes down the line, I get anxious. Thus, in my hope to be perfect enough at yoga (so that she won’t correct me when she gets to me), I start getting so anxious that I break the first rule of yoga club and collapse on my face (the karmic reward for breaking the breathing rule – also universal). It’s silly and egoic, I know. But silly and egoic are clearly two deeply ingratiated facets of my personality that I’m having a lotta trouble relinquishing. Deep in my chest cavity where I’m told most people have an organ that does something lovely (Spins? Orbits another organ? Sucks in anything that get near so that not even light can escape?), I know she’s just there to help. But as I told this same pal of mine, as she goes down the line, I can’t help but feel like I’m part of a row in the bowels of a Russian gulag, just waiting my turn to get executed.
Really, it’s only my pride getting the pistol.
But when I realized I still wasn’t okay – even with that – I decided to beat these yogic overlords at their own game.
Actually, I can’t even take credit for it. It was one of those deep-seated survival instincts my identity employed as a last ditch effort: making a concession. A sacrifice. For the greater good. (Of my vanity.) Apparently, there’s a way to have your cake… and let your ego feast on it too. The sacrifice is that you just have to save a slice for the instructor. Thus, when we began inversions, and the instructor meandered on over to me – like a teacher coming to see how your assignment’s coming along – I went into sycophancy fellatio mode:
“Can you help me with this bridge, Nancy?”
Boom.
Beat her to the party and the punch sitting spiked in a bowl inside of it.
And, Jesus! Her smile went from temple to temple faster than the first time I saw a California wildfire skip via breeze across a freeway. So she talked me through a pose I kinda already knew how to do. I pretended I’d never done it before. Slowly, I thrust my ribs toward the dim lit ceiling and formed with my physique a gothic cathedral entryway. And, as I did, I got the sweet, sweet validation that serves as my main source of diesel fuel.
“Beautiful! That’s beautiful….” she mused.
(Even though I’d done exactly what the chick across the room had been doing. Right when Nancy corrected her.)
For Nancy, it was about admiring her own work. For me, it was the elusive yoga studio compliment nobody gets. I’d prized it from her at the price of a shared ego-gasm we both could enjoy together. So maybe half the takeaway here is that yoga teaches you to share. But if that’s just making you issue an exasperated sigh out of boredom, you can at least remember this: if you’re in need of a pat on the head (which I always am) just fake a bit of humility.
This message is brought to you by “Things from House of Cards you can apply at House of Yoga”.
